


when the spring runs dry

by northerntrash



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Family feelings, Grief/Mourning, M/M, inspired by Undine mythology, souls and mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 15:32:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11293566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northerntrash/pseuds/northerntrash
Summary: "Undines are creatures of the fresh water,” she said, in the end. “Guardians of springs, and streams, and all that they feed in turn. They are fair, and strong, immortal and invulnerable to all which might hurt us, but they are born longing for just one thing, one thing that they may never find alone – which is a shame, for they are destined to be alone, unless they can find someone who can love them despite their strangeness."In which Bard finds a creature in the forest in the dead of winter, and both of them learn to let go of their fears.





	when the spring runs dry

**Author's Note:**

> And my third entry for the Big Bang '17!
> 
> Art by the incredibly talented [, commissioned by the wonderful and generous thebakerstboyskeeper!](http://flurgburgler.tumblr.com/post/162221203143/commissioned-by-thebakerstboyskeeper-for)

Bard first heard the song when he was just a young man, barely out of his childhood years, so full of hope and promise and the vigour of youth. He had been wandering the forests that bordered his home, an arrow notched in his bow ready for any unsuspecting game to find itself in his path. His family were never as hungry in the summer as they were in the colder months, but there was never any recourse to turn down extra meat – particularly if it could be smoked, and saved for the winter. They always needed more in the winter, when the whole village seemed to shrink in on itself, when his father’s hands ached from long hours on the water, when the cold seemed to sink into their bones, making everything harder, darker, more dangerous. He never wanted to go into the wood in the winter, when it felt as if the darkness was only ever moments away, shadows lurking around the corners, waiting for him to stumble, to take him away.

The old women whispered in the winter, their voices louder in the cold air, in the dark nights. They stayed in their village because it was safe there – the forest was full of spirits, the lake the resting place of a dragon. Under bridges lurked monsters; the dead roamed the streets when all were sleeping. Those stories had scared Bard as a child, but now he was older, braver, stronger. The fears of childhood had no hold on him anymore.

The others may avoid the forest and the deep waters, the shadows and the strong winds, but not Bard: he is not-quite-a-man, without fear. He strides through the forest without concern, without hesitation.

His youth was his protection, then: he was a free man here, without any task to complete but his own enjoyment. It was the kind of freedom that seemed inviolable, that nothing could possibly end: his youth clung to him still, for he had not learnt the harshness of the world, and he had not yet come to understand all the responsibilities of adulthood that would come his way. The fishing boat, repairing the nets, gutting the fish that was the main source of their income, supplemented from time to time with what Bard caught in his hunt: all this would one day fall on his shoulders, but as of yet they were not quite broad enough, so he was given this time, these odd afternoons, to find himself between the trees, to create for himself the illusion of a life that would not be full of toil.

The forest had always given him a joy that he never managed to find on the water; he was a creature of earth, of the soil and the smell of moss and the feel of the dying leaves beneath his feet. And it was funny, given all that, how much the song spoke to him, when it was the song of the fresh water.

It came to him through the trees, echoing and melancholic. It was not quite sweet, not quite perfect – there was something ragged and lost in the sound of it. It was a song born of grief, but it was beautiful none the less. He followed the sound of it, forgetting instantly all the stories that the old women had told him – _fairy songs, lights on the water, never listen, never look._

But the song of those realms, of those people so far removed from mortals, has a sway that even the most rational men struggle to ignore.

And then, and then, and then.

Bard found him in a pool that he had never seen before, a small waterfall filling it with clear, bright water that reflected the dappled sunlight that fell through the leaves. A beautiful sight, tranquil, altogether perfect and clearly _not quite right_ because of it. The mountain lions Bard had seen from time to time, when they were pushed from their lofty homes by the cold to hunt in the lowlands, they were beautiful. Wolves could be beautiful too, as could the carnivorous catfish with their flickering scales. But their beauty was a terror, too easy to be distracted by silver, by gold, by the gilt and gilding of an altogether dangerous creature.

The thing in the pool was like that, he couldn’t help but think.

It was all suddenly too still, too strange, and the naked man reclining in the water made it seem all the worse. His body was long and strong, skin paler than it should have been, hair a white-gold sheet around his shoulders, and when he turned to look at Bard his eyes were black, gleaming like liquid in a face that seemed without expression, and it took Bard a moment to realise that that was because it had a stillness about it that was not entirely human.

The creature in the pool stared at him, for the longest moment, and Bard’s heart filled with dread.

He turned on his heel, and fled.

 

* * *

 

That was the summer that Bard grew up. He could not explain it, but the sight of that creature – whatever it was – had stirred something within him. Before he had been stranding on the brink of maturity, past the irrational fears of youth, but the sight had pushed him to the rational terrors of adulthood. Now he knew that there were dangers out there, and from then on he did not return to the forest.

It took him three days before he managed to find his way home – in his fear, after seeing the creature, he had run in any old direction, forgetting to check the sky, the sun, the stars as night fell. He had been entirely lost before he had realised it, and had wandered for days before he had found the river again, and had managed to return home, sobbing as he fell through the front door into his parent’s arms, his tears the last vestiges of his childhood falling from him, staining the wood of the floor that he had learnt to walk on. He had slept, and he had eaten, but before he had done anything else he had stowed his bow and quiver, determined never again to use them.

No longer did he spend his evening fletching new arrows for hunting. Instead he sat at his mother’s side, and watched her mend the nets, trying with clumsy hands to imitate her until he had found the skill of it. She was glad to teach him, glad to give her old hands a rest after so many long years of labour, and it made his father proud to see Bard finally willing to start working at the family business, as it was.

He spent his days out on the water, doing repairs on his father’s boat, taking care of the catch as it was dragged in. The summer turned to winter, soon enough: they had less meat than they normally would, with Bard’s reluctance to go into the forest, but with his help they had brought in more fish, and the two evened out so easily that it made him a little ashamed to think of all the times he had spent frivolously in the woods when he could have been helping his father. But there was nothing to do about that now: they took care of each other, through the winter, and then through the next, and the next after that. His father passed away before he had reached his twenty-first birthday, and Bard allowed himself to feel an over-whelming grief only until his body had finished burning, and the ashes of the man that raised him disappeared into the sky. After that he forced himself to put it aside, for there was no time for this sort of thing, not now he alone had to care for his mother.

The skin of his hands blistered then hardened; his lips cracked and then healed again; every hurt he had ever known in his life had healed in the end, and his body already had the scars to prove it. This grief, he thought, couldn’t be any different than any of the other battles his body had won.

They weather many storms, here.

He fell in love with a girl he met on the water-front the following summer: he knew her, or at least who she was, for the village was too small for them to have never crossed paths before. But they had never spoken, and when they did he felt his chest expanding with a joy that he had not felt since childhood. Asta was determined, and she was strong, and there was a beauty in the callouses on her hands, the windswept mess of her hair, her bright eyes always laughing, the way she smiled at him, warm and full of love. They married before the winter came full force, in the best clothes they owned, and she threaded wildflowers in his hair when he carried her over the threshold of his parents’ home.

His mother was desperately proud.

“You have become a man now,” she told him the morning of his wedding, though the sincerity behind her words did not stop her from combing her old, pained fingers through his hair, as if he were still a boy. “I am very proud of you.”

His mother left him too, just two years later, when his first child had nearly come into the world. They named her Sigrid after her, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen – that is, of course, until Bain was born just four years later, and Tilda three more years after that. But if life had taught him anything, it is that all the good must come with shadows, and on the coldest night of winter, when Tilda was just a week old, Asta slipped from the world, her hand in Bard’s, her breath laboured as she struggled to throw off the illness that had caught her in its grip.

He was struck with a grief worse than any he had known then, for she was too young to be gone from this world, and he didn’t know, for those first few days, what to do with three children whom he desperately loved, but who were crying for their mother, and perhaps too for the hollow look in their father’s eyes. But then he remembered his father’s face, full of peace, and his mother’s hands, always trying: and perhaps more than anything he thought of Asta, and what she would have done if she had been left in his place, if it had been him who had been taken away.

She would have taken a deep breath, and she would have carried on.

So he did.

He packed away her clothes and held his children in his arms every night until they ceased to cry. He has an aunt in the village still who was more than happy to help Bard look after the children in the day in exchange for an evening meal: he spent his days on the lake hauling in as big a catch as he could before racing home to press kisses to his children’s faces. They grew well, strong and happy, and he, for the most part, was content.

If he thought of the creature in the forest from time to time, in the late afternoon when the water of the lake turned black, then there was no one to see the prickle of disconcertion that he felt, no one to ask him why he was staring at the distant and hazy line of the forest with such a strange look in his eyes.

He didn’t go into the forest: he hasn’t touched his bow since the day he met the creature in the pool. If he had his way, he never would do so again, would never again feel the softness of the forest-moss beneath his boots, hear the cracking of branches as the squirrels leapt above him. He didn’t miss it, and he felt no grief for losing that part of his life.

But the world has a habit of turning us around on ourselves: we walk one path, striking away from what we thought we did not want, only to find ourselves coming full circle again. Seven years passed after the death of his wife, and he is finally used to waking up in the morning without her beside him again. Sigrid is fourteen, nearly an adult in maturity even if not in body: she has a knack for cleaning out the fish, and she keeps her knives wickedly sharp. She fillets his catch on the lakefront even when he tells her she doesn’t need to, that she can go off and play. But there isn’t much to do in this town, and there are many other children who do jobs for their fishermen fathers on the front, so at least she isn’t alone. Bain has quick hands, and he makes easy work of repairing the nets: Tilda is young enough to enjoy sitting between the two of them, playing with her wooden dolls, occasionally chasing other children along the piers. He is happy – he takes pleasure in the fact that his children never go to bed hungry (even if they eat fish more often than any of them would really like), in their loud and raucous laughter as it echoes through the small house that he always manages to keep warm, just.

Then the winter comes.

They have weathered many, his little family. Ones where Tilda cried from how cold her toes were at the end of the day, ones where Sigrid’s nose never stopped running and Bain’s eyes seemed hollow as they stared up at the grey sky, searching for sunlight that never seemed to find them, but this is far worse than any other they have ever known.

Everything slows, suddenly, terribly.

The cold comes without warning, and without building. One day it is the chilly but normal temperature of a late autumn day: the next the sun disappears, the water in the drinking butts freezes over, and they are plunged into the depths of winter.

The old cannot come out of their houses: the young cry in front of fires that do not burn bright enough to keep out the bitterness of the season. An old man on his street is found, just a few weeks in, frozen to death in his own bed, his children dead and no one there to help him bring enough wood and coal inside to keep him warm. Bard resolves himself to checking in on all the others that live nearby, who might be suffering from too much pride and not enough help freely given.

He is not the first to pass away in the village: he is not the last.

There is no snow, only the heavy and impenetrable cloud and sheets of ice that form on the streets every night, lethal.

The lake freezes over, and Bard cannot fish; the food they have put aside is not enough to keep them through the long months, and the price of wood and coal, sent down from the mountains, becomes too much for him to afford, even with everything that he had put aside so carefully. In the space of just a few weeks they go from being reasonably secure to being faced with the very real possibility of not making it through the winter. Others serve worse, but he does not have enough to help them: he sees the widow down the street mixing her blood with the gruel she has made for her young baby, an old recipe for staving off starvation.

He hikes out onto the ice, to where it is thinner, creaking under his weight, and he drills down through it, hangs his line, hoping to get enough each day for a meal, for just one more day.

But nothing comes. The fish have gone, down the river perhaps to warmer climes, or else the cold got them too, and they are frozen in the ice, floating beneath the sheets. He does not know but he does not care – the point is, they are not on his line.

The weeks go by, slower and slower.

Sigrid begins to look afraid as she realises what is happening. Last night he caught shifting half of her dinner onto Tilda’s plate whilst she was distracted talking to Bain, and that hurt worse than the cold ever could.

And then he finds himself cracking open the last case of preserved fish in the cellar, and Bard’s mouth is already twisting at the thought of eating more of the same, small portions to make it last. He will go without eventually, he knows this without any doubt, to give his children more, but it still will not be enough, and he knows it with a certainty that he had hidden before behind a wall of denial. And when he goes back upstairs he looks with fear, for the first time, at his children. He has thought before of losing them, with horror and despair, as all parents do, but this time it feels so close, so certain an outcome, and the thought of it made something hard and cold curl in his chest.

How soon will it be until he is just like the widow, cutting his own arm to try and give his children just a little more, still so much less than they deserve?

He goes to the attic, and pulls down his bow.

 

* * *

 

It is just as he remembers it, but he is different.

Once the forest had given him peace, and he had wondered if it would again, but to no avail. As a child – and with the benefit of hindsight, how much of a child he had been the last time he had come into this forest – it had comforted him. He had known the sound of the birdsong, the feel of the earth, but time had made the land unfamiliar, and the chill winds had culled the birds. No hope of a catch from fowl, he had realised early enough in the day, which was a shame – they were always the most plentiful to catch, though tricky, and in the past it had always been easy enough to find them on the forest’s edge. He would have like that – he could have avoided going deep, following the old rabbit paths between the trees, back in the direction of the thing that he did not want to think about.

But he couldn’t do that, and his fear for his family was greater than his fear of the creature in the wood, the one that seemed so unreal with the passage of time. How certain was he that such a creature had even existed? Perhaps it had just been a figment of his imagination, or that he had seen just a normal man bathing in the woods, and had somehow convinced himself that there had been something malignant, something malicious, in his gaze. So he tried to convince himself, knowing somewhere deep down inside himself that he had seen exactly what he remembered. But denial can be a positive force, and by the time he was deep in the forest he had almost managed to quiet the voice of fear in his chest, focusing instead on the way that everything had changed around him.

He was used to seeing the forest in the summertime: even in his youth, he had rarely ventured into the forest in the colder months, when wolves were more likely to come down from the mountains. So he has little frame of reference for how it would look now, and he is not comforted by the sight of it: everything feels still, dead – nothing moves between the trees, and he cannot find any sign of rabbits, of deer. They must be here somewhere, he knows, but where they are he cannot tell – they have hidden themselves away from the cold. The squirrels that would have been his back up all those years ago are out as well, curled in tree-trunks beyond Bard’s reach, sleeping the cold away.

The whole place tastes like death to him – the puddles have frozen over, the earth that he can see is through the dead leaves look like scars against the forest floor. The winter frost has turned the rich greens and browns sickly pale, glittering with a malignant frost that Bard feels deep in his bones. Was it his age, he wondered as he quietly moved through the dead undergrowth, or was the frost here somehow worse than the village, as if the forest itself were conspiring to kill him?

A flight of fancy, of course – how could the forest be colder than anywhere else? Just his fear talking, for all that he has been dampened down by his own self-assurances. The process of movement is helping him too, of course – the rhythms of his youth have come back to him easily, moving between the trunks with the same sure-footedness that he had enjoyed in his youth. For a moment he forgets his exhaustion, the cold that has turned his fingers white, the look he will see in his children’s eyes if he comes home without food for them. There is almost a pleasure to it, despite the cold, despite the fear, and for a moment he allows himself to pretend that he is young again, that this is just a normal afternoon for him, that his parents are still alive, and that he is just out to try and pick out a couple of pheasants for them. That he had no responsibilities, no fears, no reality to encroach on his enjoyment.

And then, suddenly, a sound.

It comes from nowhere – it doesn’t build, doesn’t grow. One moment he is moving in silence, the next the sound of water, loud, pouring from some unseen place nearby. A waterfall, he thinks, and fear grips his chest as he remembers the scene. With the waterfall comes another sound, the song again – it is quieter than he remembers, as if in deference to the slow sleep of the winter forest. He is back there, he knows, quite suddenly – how he ended up in this place he does not know for there should be nothing here but forest, there is not meant to be any river to feed a waterfall.

A laugh sounds through the trees.

It is deep, and cold, and mocking.

He turns, stumbles, reaches for a tree to break his fall and as he pulls himself back up he sees a flash a silver-white, a flicker that he cannot quite catch as he takes in a sudden, sharp breath, the air freezing against his chest. The fear is almost palpable, pressing down on him: he wants to fall to his knees, bury his face against the earth, hide as a child wood against the cold ground and pretend that none of this is happening. And he is close, so close to doing so - He wants to run, away from the wilderness, to return to the relative safety of his village, of his home, of his children…

His children.

He sees their eyes before him and he forces himself to straighten. To run wildly through the trees now would just leave him lost, far from home, and he refuses to do that – no matter what is here with him, regardless of what it wants, he is returning home tonight, he is seeing his children again.

“Who are you?” he calls, for he is not a boy any longer, and he refuses to be cowed by a creature he cannot even see.

It has forced him from the forest that once he loved before, filled him with enough fear that nothing else but leaving seemed to matter to him.

Not anymore.

He calls the same, again, and then for a third time, and when he does the trembling fear in the air seems to dissipate, and he remembers the old women and their mutterings, the power of three, _the power of three._

He becomes aware, suddenly, of the sound of water again, much closer this time.

And now Bard turns, and once again he sees the pool, gleaming again, just as he remembers it: the sunlight is dappling the water, a green-gold glow to it as it laps the side of the pool, the water clearer than any he has ever seen. But there is no sunlight, not today – the glimpses of the sky that he can see through the trees is sheet grey, heavy clouds bulbous with the promise of rain – or worse, snow. Yet still the pool lights as it did in his memory, but back then the sunshine had been bright overhead, and the sight of it had not seemed as odd to him as it does now.

Perhaps he is focusing on this to stop himself from thinking about anything else – perhaps it is the way that the human mind works, when faced with something that it cannot possibly understand. It focuses on things less terrifying, and ignores that which we cannot understand – we see the gold, but not the dragon.

But oh, now he had thought of it Bard found his eyes dragged to the occupant of the pool, to the strange silver-pale skin beneath the water, the long limbs that seemed so strong even though they were distorted and slender where they lay beneath the water. The silver-gold hair, pooling around the torso – and his breath stuttered as Bard’s gaze dragged over a scar, long and jagged, running across the centre of the creature’s chest, right over his heart. Had that been there the last time, or was it new? – Bard couldn’t remember seeing it, but then again, he hadn’t been paying all that much attention last time.

“Look at me,” the creature in the pool said, and Bard did.

The face was the same too – long, hard lines, a sculpted jaw, a haughty expression hovering around a mouth that seemed unaccustomed to smiling. And the eyes – oh, the eyes.

As black as pitch, shining as if damp with unshed tears. The eyes of a creature unlike any that Bard had ever known.

“You have come before,” the creature said, and Bard nodded.

“Many years ago.”

“Not all that long,” the creature replied. “But I suppose, for a human. Mortal lives move so quickly. And indeed, you are older now than last time.”

“You have not aged a day,” Bard replied, cautiously, only now realising that he had dropped his bow somewhere along the way, that he was without weapon. “But then again, I don’t suppose you are entirely human, are you?”

The creature shrugged.

“Human in every way, but one,” he answered, ambiguous and without explanation, his hand briefly stroking the scar on his chest. “Well, maybe not quite. But close enough.”

“Riddles,” Bard muttered, his eyes narrowing, and for a moment it seemed to him that the creature’s face softened just a little, as if he was amused.

“What is your name?”

The creature stared at him.

“I am Undine, creature of the water, magic and myth incarnate-”

“That is quite a mouthful though,” Bard interrupted. “My name is Bard, if that helps at all.”

And how strange, but the creature in the pool seemed at a loss for words, and the fear that had hazed the air still dropped all the more. The Undine – and Bard could have sworn that he knew that word from somewhere, for all that he could not remember it right now – seemed to sink back against the rock, the water lapping at his skin, and he seemed smaller now than before, as if he had hunched in on himself, almost as if he was afraid.

But what would he have to be afraid of?

“Thranduil,” the creature replied, in the end. “Though it has been many years since I was called by any name.”

“Thranduil,” Bard replied, tasting the word in his mouth. “Well, it is good to meet you, Thranduil. Again, I should say, but I really should be on my way. I need to return to my family. With something to eat, preferably.”

He was rambling, he knew it, but he didn’t quite know what else to say. He stopped abruptly as Thranduil stood, the water falling down his skin, and Bard averted his eyes quickly even though Thranduil did not seem embarrassed in the slightest to be seen in the nude in the middle of a forest in winter. Neither did he seem cold, despite the frost, and when he stepped from the water, bare-foot, he did not flinch from the freezing earth. From the branch of a tree he pulled a robe of silk that Bard could have sworn had not been there before – or at least it looked like silk, though it seemed to move in a way that no normal fabric should. It was the colour of water, for all that was impossible – a haze of shades, rippling and moving with the fabric, and it wrapped around Thranduil’s body as if it had been made for him, which, Bard supposed, it probably had.

By magical tailors, he thought to himself, absently.

Thranduil turned to him then, and Bard realised that he was not quite as tall as he had thought, though still the Undine stood taller than Bard. His face, now he was closer, seemed less strange, and the black pools of his eyes did not fill Bard with fear anymore, though still it was disconcerting to see his own face reflected back at him.

“Food,” Thranduil said, quietly. “Mortals need sustenance to survive.”

Bard nodded, though he was not sure he had been asked a question – it was hard to tell quite whether Thranduil was staring directly at him.

He left, and Bard found himself padding after him quickly, unwilling to be left alone by the pool without the company of its odd inhabitant. He hurried to keep pace with Thranduil, but luckily he did not move far through the wood – a matter of moments and he lead Bard to a glade, where a pair of fat pheasants were roosting in view. Thranduil nodded at him, and then at the birds, and Bard felt foolish, for he had not thought to look for his bow before he had followed Thranduil, and now it might be anywhere, lost somewhere between the trees.

But Thranduil seemed to notice his disquiet, for he frowned, just a little, before reaching into the folds of his robe and pulling from somewhere within it another bow, larger and finer both than the one that Bard had been lost. It should not have fit beneath the close-fitting fabric, but his mind blanked that out, unwilling to think on it. This seemed carved from some strange wood, one that Bard had not seen before – it was darker, stronger, and carved all over with an elegant pattern that he knew, with his own humble woodworking skills, he would never have been able to replicate. He pulled one of his own arrows from his quiver, despairing a little at the rough craftsmanship compared to the bow, and fired one, then another, in quick succession. Two birds fell from their roosts, falling to the ground with a soft sound that seemed to echo in the silence of the forest.

Bard felt an overwhelming sense of relief at the sight. Food for tonight.

“I must return to the pool,” Thranduil said, suddenly, and he turned back, fleeter now than before. Bard had almost lost sight of him by the time he had grabbed the birds and turned in his direction again, and by the time he caught up with him Thranduil was once again beneath the water, a sigh on his lips, his dark eyes fixed on the heavy sky above them.

“Aren’t you cold?” Bard asked, before he could help himself. Thranduil’s gaze was bemused, Bard thought, rather than irritated by the question, which he supposed was some relief, but he rather got the feeling that he had outstayed his welcome.

“I should go,” he said, lacing the feet of the birds together and slinging them through his belt. “It is good to know that I did not hallucinate you, unless of course this is all a dream too.”

And he turned to leave them, the feathers still warm against his leg, but before he left a thought struck him. He paused, and turned back, to look once more at the creature from the pool, whose black eyes seemed emotionless but whose face, staring after Bard, wore such a startling expression of longing in that moment that Bard felt his chest twist with an empathy he had not expected.

“Thank you,” he said, softly, with genuine feeling.

Thranduil inclined his head, just once, and something about his mouth twitched, though whether in a smile or a grimace Bard could not be certain. There was something tense and coiled in the set of Thranduil’s shoulders, something expectant but restrained, and it took Bard a moment to realise what it was.

“I will need meat again, soon enough,” he said, as casually as he could. “Perhaps, when I do, I could see you again.”

Thranduil’s body seemed to sag in relief, but it was only for a moment and then he returned to normal. Not once did his expression change, and had Bard not caught sight of the brief moment then he would not have believed that it happened, so out of character was it.

“Should you wish,” he said, aloof, off-hand, and Bard smiled, as he turned away.

It was only as he reached the edge of the forest that he realised he still had Thranduil’s bow, held tight in his hand.

 

* * *

 

He hid the bow quickly when he returned home, not wanting to deal with the questions that would inevitably ensue when his children saw the fine craftsmanship that did not belong to their world. He plucked the birds, then stripped them of meat for a stew that would last them for several days if they ate it carefully enough. When they had eaten, his children pink-cheeked from the unexpected warmth of good food (and oh, how that made his chest ache) he served a small bowl, and took it next door, to the old woman who lived there who watched the children on occasion, when they were ill and Bard could not afford to avoid fishing for a day.

When she had settled, with much thanks, with the bowl, Bard ran a hand through his hair.

“Ingrid,” he began, uncertain of himself. “Do you know anything about Undine?”

The old woman looked at him with some concern, her wrinkled eyes creasing all the more as she slowly chewed a mouthful of stew.

“It has been many years since you asked me to tell you one of those stories,” she said, when she swallowed. Her voice was knowing, but oddly cautious, as if she had questions to ask, but did not want to know the answer. “And to get this meat – well, I’m guessing you had to go into the forest, didn’t you?”

Bard didn’t answer: he just watched her, waiting patiently for her to carry on.

“Undines are creatures of the fresh water,” she said, in the end. “Guardians of springs, and streams, and all that they feed in turn. They are fair, and strong, immortal and invulnerable to all which might hurt _us_ , but they are born longing for just one thing, one thing that they may never find alone – which is a shame, for they are destined to be alone, unless they can find someone who can love them despite their strangeness.”

“What do they want?” Bard asked, a little breathless. He felt as he had done as a child, listening to the stories that would inevitably give him nightmares- stories that made him shiver, that he longed to hear more of.

“They want souls,” Ingrid told him, her voice very quiet. “For when they have souls, a heart, whatever word you want to give it, whatever it is that makes us _us –_ when they do they will gain mortality, and be able to live as men, and die as them too.”

“Why do they want to die?” Bard found himself saying, for he could not understand such a thing, not when death had come so close to him so many times. The idea of invulnerability sounded like a dream to him when food was scarce and winter howled at the door like a wolf, but the old woman shook her head, slowly, smiling with the fondness of the old who look upon the young.

“It is a bitter thing, to be alone for so long, when all that you know dies around you. They say their chests are hollow, and their eyes are black, for they only know the grief of loneliness.”

Bard nodded, slowly, and Ingrid watched him, her eyes knowing and kind.

“I won’t ask you what you saw in the woods, my dear,” she said, swallowing the last of her stew. “All I ask is that you be careful, whatever you choose to do.”

 

* * *

 

It was a week before he went back to the forest, a week before he found the courage and the determination to hook the bow around his shoulder and venture once more between the tress, stripped of their summer finery. And when he did, he was glad of it: gone was the fear, his chest free and his breathing easy without the weight of it, and he took to the paths with an easy gait. He had faced the monster of his childhood, the horror of his nightmares, and had found just a lonely man – a strange, and powerful not-quite man, to be sure, but not something to be afraid of, not anymore. He carried the bow of the Undine on his shoulder, and he felt as if the forest knew that: the trees seemed to shift around him, though there was little wind, nudging him in a determined direction that he followed without question, knowing where it was they would lead him.

And indeed, far sooner this time, the song came through the forest, calling to him. It was still a song of grief and pain, but no longer did it chill him as it had done when he was young. Now he knew the ache of these things himself, he thought, and he knew that he could survive them. He felt pity, rather than fear; empathy rather than terror at the unknown.

“Does the pool move,” he asked, as he stepped from the treeline to the edge of the spring. “Or does the forest move around you? For I am certain that I walked far less than the last time I was here, yet once more I have found you.”

Thranduil stared at him, clearly bewildered.

“You came back,” he said, ignoring Bard’s question, and Bard threw himself to the ground at the water’s edge, stretching his legs out along the cold ground as he did so, letting out a vocal shiver at the feeling of it, even through the layers of his clothing.

“Of course I did,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

Thranduil was watching him still, with those strange, limpid eyes. They startled Bard less to look at now, and he held Thranduil’s gaze – or at least, he thought he did. It was hard to tell.

“You’re cold,” Thranduil said, sitting up from where he had been reclining. “Mortals feel the cold, don’t they?”

Bard did not have time to respond before Thranduil reached for the bank, pressing his palm flat to the earth. Then, quite suddenly, where once it had been cold beneath Bard it grew warmer, and from the dead earth burst grass, fresh and bright with the scent of spring.

“That’s an impressive party trick,” he said, a little absently as he stared at the small wildflowers that were now vying for position around him. “So what they say about Undines is true – you control all that which your spring feeds.”

“Exactly,” Thranduil said, just a little smugly, before his eyes darted up to Bard’s again. “You know of the Undine, then?”

Bard shrugged.

“Just a little. The old women in the village still tell the stories of the old magics. Though I’m not really sure I believed in any of it until I met you. But tell me, if you will – if you can make it warm and bright, why do you allow winter to take the forest?”

Thranduil blinked.

“What is wrong with winter?” he asked, a little bewildered. “And besides, if my forest and mine alone remained eternally summer, do you really think no one would notice?”

“A fair point,” Bard conceded. “But winter is the worst of times. The death, the cold, the ending of the year.”

Thranduil seemed to consider this for a moment, before he shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Though I suppose it might seem that way to a mortal mind, who looks upon the world with the knowledge of his own ending. But the forest, all of the world – it does not die in the winter, but sleeps. The plants do not end, they simply recede, to reappear again when they have had their rest. The sun too, must leave for a time, but it will always return. There is no ending, only the endless cycling of the world. The deep summer is the closest to true death that the natural world ever comes to, those heats when the plants are killed from lack of water, when the rivers shrink and tremble, when the earth turns to dust beneath the overzealous sun. But even those times end – with rainstorms and mudslides and a chance to begin growing again, anew.”

Bard wasn’t sure what to do with such a diatribe: he had not expected it, had thought of winter in only one way for as long as he could remember. But he supposed that was the way of it, for those who were as endless as the growth of nature, for a creature like Thranduil.

“Winters brings famine, brings wolves to the door, kills the young and the old,” he said, in the end. “But I see your point. And you are right – there is fear in the – what did you call them? The deep summers? A good name for it, though not one I have ever heard before.”

“My father taught it me,” Thranduil said, absently. “I was born at the breaking of a deep summer, at the coming of the storms.”

This was unexpected, and Bard rubbed at the back of his neck, a little awkwardly.

“I didn’t realise you had a father,” he said, in the end. “Do you have children of your own?”

Thranduil shook his head, slowly.

“He was not my father in the mortal sense. If an Undine’s spring is strong enough, if the power of the world runs through the water, he may force from the underground tunnels a new spring, and from that comes a new Undine, a child of the first in that sense. Alas, his spring dried up many centuries ago, and I have not the strength to make my own. Once, I thought I might have, but… well. Either it did not take, or I was too far away, too weak from the undertaking, to hear the song of the new spring. I am quite alone, now. The magics leave the earth. Soon enough my spring will dry up too, and with it will come my ending.”

Bard’s chest constricted in grief for the strange creature: he could not envisage such a life, so empty, so alone.

“I am sorry,” he said, before a thought occurred to him. “The stories of Undine’s that we hear – they say you cannot die. Is that not true?”

Thranduil shrugged.

“It isn’t a death as you know it. I will become one with that which my spring has fed, and my consciousness will remain with the trees. I will be awake but unable to move, to do, to feel – trapped even more than I am now. And one day the trees will be cut for timber, without my protection, and then I will be trapped in the logs of a house, the boards of a bridge, or I will be burnt for firewood, and then I will be ashes, and embers, blown wherever the wind takes me, to feed another tree, to be trapped again there, for the whole cycle to continue until the world itself comes to an end.”

Bard thought he could almost see it, as Thranduil spoke: the silent screams of a creature beyond human understanding, without any way to save themselves, recycled time and time again throughout history, never dying, feeling only the pain of the axe, the fire, the footsteps of man as they walked overhead.

“I cannot imagine it,” Bard said, and Thranduil shrugged, leaning back against the bank, his eyes on the sky overhead.

“Such is the fate of many of us. I have made my peace with it. You will find animals for your table in that direction,” he said, gesturing with a flick of his wrist, a clear dismissal. “The trees will guide you.”

Bard nodded, slowly.

“I still have your bow,” he said, as he got to his feet. He was not stung by the dismissal – he couldn’t help but think that he had caused Thranduil some grief, asking the questions that he had, and he felt too that it was time for him to leave. Thranduil glanced at it, and there was a strange expression about his face for a moment as he regarded the bow, in Bard’s hands.

“It was a gift,” he said, in the end. “For the first creature who has stopped to talk to me since the mountains were twice as tall as they are now. Keep it.”

And so Bard did, walking away from the spring, letting the trees guide him towards a brace of rabbits, who seemed to fall in front of his arrows with an ease that he couldn’t help but feel was not entirely his own.

 

* * *

 

Other men might not have come back: promise fulfilled, guilt over the bow dissolved, others might have avoided meeting such a creature. But Bard was not a man of that kind: less than a week passed before he took to the forest again, once again coming across Thranduil. The next time, and the one after that too, all of them were the same. He would sit with Thranduil a while, before going off to hunt. Sometimes Thranduil would leave the pool and join him, if only for a brief time: others, he would remain in the water, watching Bard as he left.

Soon the sight of the Undine ceased to bring disquiet bubbling in Bard’s chest: soon he grew quite used to those dark eyes, to that silver skin (though he found himself never quite getting used to Thranduil’s easy way of nudity).

It was strange, to talk to him, but soon that became easy enough, as well. Bard spoke of his children, of his late wife, of his mother and father, and Thranduil listened to all with a fascination that might have been strange had it not so obviously been laced with longing, and whenever he saw that look of pain flicker across Thranduil’s expression he remembered Ingrid’s words, that what an Undine longed for more than anything else could come only through the love of another. He might have stopped telling such tales, had they not also so obviously given Thranduil’s pleasure as well as pain, in equal terms. He asked many questions, not always understanding what Bard was talking about – he knew of houses and boats, but not of fishing nets and lines; could understand hunger and joy, but had never experienced them himself.

It might have felt one-sided, had Thranduil not spoken as often, in turn.

He told Bard of the forest: how this had been meadows when first he had woken, full of the wildflowers whose ancestors grew around Bard whenever Thranduil warmed the grass for him. He told Bard the feeling of those first seeds calling to him through the soil, feeding from the water of his spring, and how it had felt when first they had burst from the earth, as shoots then saplings then finally as trees. He described the forest as it had once been, just a copse of trees, and how it had grown when Thranduil was at his strongest, from the lakeside to the distant mountains, all spreading from this one original source. As Bard had suspected, the spring did move, though he would be the first to admit that he did not quite understand the logistics of it.

Thranduil told him of the creatures that lived within the forest now, and all those who had come before, when times had been different. The centaurs that had once dwelt in the south, before leaving to chase the stories of the stars. The white stag, of which now there was only one, ancient and wise. The rabbit god, whose black form could be seen leaping between the trees, if only one was careful enough to look. The beetles that searched for gold beneath the earth; the squirrels, black and red and grey, and the long battles they had raged between themselves; the abbey of mice, that offered shelter to all and sundry; the otters in the river that sang their own songs; the great offence caused once between a badger and a fox that had been maintained for generations since. The castles of the moles, deep beneath the earth; the last unicorn, who had left his forest so very long ago. The sprites, who had once caused such mischief, turned now to butterflies. The birds that had once sung, now mute. How the robin stained his breast red; how the magpie turned his own white. The stories were endless, and it was when Thranduil was recounting them that Bard could best remember the difference between himself and the creature, the agelessness and wisdom of him, the magic that was engrained deep within his bones, his blood, his empty, silent chest.

For other times it seemed as if there was very little that separated them, for within time Thranduil knew all that there was about Bard, and Bard felt as if he knew all that there was about the Undine. Eventually the ice on the lake thawed, and the winter began to turn once more to spring, but still Bard found the time, whenever he could, to return again and again to the spring where Thranduil lay, surrounded soon enough by wildflowers rather than frost, to sit by his side and speak of all that they had known and all that they might one day know in turn.

As the seasons bled into another it became harder and harder for Bard to force himself to leave when the time came, harder and harder to bid farewell to the Undine, to leave the forest and all its lingering magic, to return once more to reality.

And every time that song, that deep and melancholy sound, following him through the trees as if asking him a question that he had no way of answering.

 

* * *

 

How was it all to end, but with a deep summer?

The women always said that the coldest of winters would be followed by the worst of summers, and they were right, as they so often were. The soft spring turned bitterly hot, the sun the new enemy, the lakewater warm to the touch in the first time in living memory. The village rejoiced over the return of the sun, only soon for it to turn to despair as the few crops they grew withered and died, as skin blistered and burnt beneath its heat, as the lake receded enough that they could see, for the first time in generations, the long white juts of what might have been bones, cutting through the silt here and there. Once Bard might have scoffed at the villages who whispered amongst themselves that they were dragon bones, but now he held his tongue, and asked Thranduil the next time he could.

“They could well be,” was Thranduil’s response. “Once indeed a dragon was slayed over the lake, and in time another may come, and be slain in turn. These stories – these great and terrible stories – have a habit of repeating themselves, just as soon as they are forgotten.”

In the midst of this great heat Thranduil alone seemed unchanged, though the forest around him grew brown and brittle. His spring never seemed to alter, which should have been reassuring, but there was a disquiet around the clearing that Bard seemed never able to shift, as if there was something that he was not seeing, always just out of sight. He forced it from his mind, however, as Thranduil himself was just the same as he ever was.

The village was tough, and so was he: they had just come out of the worst winter in living memory, and they were not about to let the worst summer take them in turn. The heat did not abate, but after a month of intensity they saw clouds begin to form around the distant mountains. They did not move for days, but grew ever larger, bulging with the promise of water, of storms, of mudslides and breaking river banks and the first days of autumn, coming finally to pull the world back to rights. It was on the last day of the deep summer that Bard made his way into the wood to find the trees shivering, leaves brushing at his shoulders as soon as he had stepped within their boundaries.

“What is it?” he asked, but of course they could not answer: all they could do was nudge him along. He thought they were leading him to the spring, to Thranduil, and the dread began to creep up his throat, but when he finally burst into the clearing he saw not the spring, its eternal gleaming waters and mossy banks, but Thranduil himself, lying curled on a bed of dead leaves, his breathing laboured, his skin pale, so much paler than it was even normally.

Bard called his name, but there was no response. When he fell to his knees at Thranduil’s side there was no response, not even when he turned the Undine on his side, and curled a protective arm beneath his neck.

“Thranduil,” he whispered again, to no avail. He prepared to take the weight of him in his arms, but when he lifted he realised that his body was light, as light as his children had been when they were small, as if there was something inherently insubstantial. His eyes fell on the scar, visible beneath his gaping robe, looking stark and violent against his otherwise unmarred skin.

_Empty, so empty._

“Help me,” he asked the trees, and they quivered above him, dead leaves falling from their whispering branches: they sounded as desperate as he felt in that moment, at a loss, feeling only the sudden fear of loss. He had not known it before that moment, but he was not ready to lose Thranduil, not yet. He had not mentioned death since their early conversation, but now the words came to Bard’s mind again, and he shuddered at the thought of them. Then, all of a sudden, a way opened before him, and there was the spring, in view. He strode towards it, the strangely light body in his arms, but stopped in horror at what he saw.

The spring, once so vibrant, was near empty, the stone dry and hot, the moss that had once crept so close to the surface of the water dried to a husk so that when he knelt, to lower Thranduil to the small slick of water at the bottom of the once-pool they crumbled to dust beneath his knees. Thranduil stirred now that he was in the poor excuse for a pool, his eyes opening, just a little.

“What has happened?” Bard asked, his eyes fixed on the lines of Thranduil’s face as his eyes opened, just a little, his hand gesturing around them.

“It has been drying out. I came into this world at the end of a deep summer, and it seems that I am to leave it too by the same method.”

Bard shook his shoulder, the grief heavy and hot inside him. In the distance came a rumble of thunder, the promise of a storm soon to break.

“It did not look like this the last time I was here.”

“No,” Thranduil replied, shaking his head. “I am afraid I hid the sight of it from you.”

Bard had no words, and Thranduil tried to smile.

“I did not want you to look upon death, not again.”

His words struck horror deep within Bard, the reality of Thranduil’s words taking over all his rational senses, his pain metallic in his mouth.

“You would have died, without telling me?”

Thranduil nodded, just once, his gaze drifting to the overhanging trees, which seemed to lean closer, as if afraid for their old friend, the presence that they had known since they were just shoots bursting from the earth beneath their mother’s branches.

“I would have gone, but I would still have been with you. I will watch from the trees as you walk the hidden paths that you have learnt with my bow, first you and then your children, then their children too, until your line or my forest has gone, whichever comes first. I would have been by your side for all of your days.”

“But I wouldn’t have known that you were here!” Bard replied, finding himself yelling despite himself. His voice competed with the distant thunder, rolling once more across the forest, as if he shared his fear with the storm, “I wouldn’t know you! What reason would I have to come into this wood if not for you!”

“You are upset,” Thranduil said, his voice just a little confused, a little sad, as if it were Bard he were concerned for, here at the end of all things, the end of all true magic in this part of the world. “I did not mean for that. I thought it might be best for me to go.”

“You cannot leave me.” Bard’s voice cracked, painful. “Not now.”

But Thranduil’s eyes were closing again, and Bard half-fell into the pool in his desperation to get closer to the creature who had found a place in Bard’s life, alongside all else that made him who he was. He reached for his face, finding Thranduil’s skin burning hot, but he rested his palm against his cheek nonetheless.

“There are so many stories for you still to tell me,” he whispered, his voice shaking just a little. “I had wanted you to tell the one about the squirrels to Tilda. She won’t believe me when I tell her that they are vicious.”

Thranduil huffed a quiet laugh.

“I would have been honoured to meet your children.”

“Stay, and you shall,” Bard pleaded, but Thranduil’s eyes did not open.

“My spring is dying.” And his voice was so full of finality, so close to the end, certain. “I want you to know, before I go, that you have been the greatest friend that I have ever known, in all of my long years, and that I have loved you more than I can say, for with you has come the joys of life that I never thought were mine to have. I have never thanked you for that, and I feel I must do so now, before I miss my chance.”

“It has been a long and lonely life, but for you,” he said, as the first sparse drops of rain fell around them. The forest seemed to sigh, whether in grief or relief Bard couldn’t be sure, and now he could not afford the time to care.

“I don’t know why,” he said, cutting himself off, the words hurting even as he tried to force them out. “I don’t know why you have been alone. They say that your kind are strange, but you are not – you know the same grief as I, carry the same burdens, though yours are trees and mine are my children. As different as we might be we are similar too, and… I…”

And then it came to him, in a sudden realisation, a knowledge that had been waiting inside him, somewhere deep within his chest, that part of him that made him human. It had known, for how long Bard could not tell, and as he lay in the dying pool as a storm teetered on the brink of breaking above them, he realised, cradling a dying Undine in his arms, exactly what he could do.

“Thranduil, you must tell me now, and answer me in all honestly. Do you truly wish to leave? For if you do, I will not stop you, and I will not make the decision for you. Do you wish to leave?”

His voice was urgent, desperate, startling enough that Thranduil opened his eyes once more, frowning, weak as he stared up at Bard.

“Bard,” he said, his voice heavy. “It doesn’t matter what I wish-”

“Tell me,” Bard said, louder now. “Do you want to die?”

And for a moment a terrible silence, Bard’s fears raging louder than the storm could ever have been, and then all of a sudden the skies opened, the torrential rain battering down, heavy and near painful against his burnt skin. The forest around them came alive with the sound and the smell, the heavy scent of the dry becoming wet, of thirst being quenched everywhere except this spring, where the water was nearly spent. No matter how heavy the rain fell it did not touch the pool, made no difference to the Undine, who was staring at him, with eyes dark and damned beautiful, and Bard felt his heart constrict at the thought that he had once found them terrible.

“No,” Thranduil whispered, final. “No, I would give anything to have more time here.”

“I love you,” Bard said, and then again, louder, to beat the sound of the storm. “I love you!”

“Bard,” Thranduil said, his voice desperate, defeated. “It is-“

But it was not too late. As the last of the water disappeared from the pool Thranduil’s body seemed to shiver, and under Bard’s gaze the scar across his chest receded, becoming smaller and fainter until it disappeared, all of a sudden, and then Thranduil’s back bucked, and Bard had to cling to keep hold of his body, skin slick from the rain: his skin changed, taking on a flush that seemed to Bard’s eyes to appear, all of a sudden, starting at no discernible point.

And then Thranduil’s eyes opened, and they were no longer dark.

They stared at each other, for a long moment.

“Your scar,” Bard said, absently, but Thranduil did not seem to notice: he was staring around himself with a wonder that Bard had never seen. His eyes followed the flight of a bird, up into the sky, disrupted finally by the storm it seemed, and then his gaze turned back to Bard, who took a moment to look at his eyes once more now the darkness had left them, the silver of them shining in the sepia light filtering through the clouds.

“I’m cold,” he said, but it was said with a joy, a strange and intense happiness that Bard had never know. Bard shook his head, just a little, shrugging out of his heavy overcoat and throwing it around Thranduil’s shoulders, encased only in the fine maybe-silk of his robe.

“You’re going to catch a cold,” he said, half-absently, mind still trying to wrap around the possibility of it all, pulling Thranduil up into sitting. He came willingly in Bard’s arms before he winced, looking down at the side of the pool, where his bare foot had pressed against a jutting stone, not hard enough to break the skin, but certainly hard enough to sting.

“It hurts,” he said, with some awe, and Bard forgot his worries, forgot his fear, forgot everything for just a moment but for the man – and now he was a man – in front of him, and pulled him closer, into his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](https://northerntrash.tumblr.com)!


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